President Bola Tinubu and the state governors, save two or three, have found themselves in a very peculiar bind. Their respective reactions to the troubling political circumstances of their making, barely 74 days to the presidential election in 2027, is not only mind-boggling, but may yet put all in trouble.
It may not be straightforward to determine who, between the president and the governors, led the other into the odd corner they have found themselves. It can more comfortably be said, though, that Tinubu held out the bait that the governors greedily swallowed. Now they all seem to be choking and suffocating the society as well.
From all indications, the next morning after he mechanically declared that “subsidy is gone”, that is to say, the day after his inauguration on May 29 2023, President Tinubu promptly turned his mind on how he would contest and possibly win the next election four years down the line. Having been declared the winner of the 2023 presidential election by the Independent National Electoral Commission in circumstances that were not the most elegant, it appeared that Tinubu was determined to do it better the next time.
Somehow, however, his design for a smooth second term-bid was laid, as it were, on a faulty premise. His belief that the success of his second term bid would be assured once he got all the state governors to be in the same political party with him, was a curious proposition. Quite odd. His conviction that once he got the state governors on his boat, all will be hunky dory for the 2027 race was so simplistic.
There was no antecedent along that line. That probably excited him the more. He went for the governors, one after the other, telling them or showing them things that made each of them respond as charmed children did to the Pied Piper of Hamelin in the German classic. They all followed him.
It is one thing to corral the governors to his political side. The question becomes, what value do the governors bring along that would guarantee Tinubu what he hankers for? For a man reckoned to be a grandmaster of sorts in the dynamics of Nigerian politics, Tinubu knew, must have known, that many of the governors he went out to pull to join his party, did not get to their lofty gubernatorial seat with the people’s mandate. Simply put, many of them did not truly win the elections that saw them into their state houses. That may have made it far easier to “convince” the governors to follow the Piped Piper.
Now they have gathered and surrounded the summoner. What next? This now, is the problem confronting Tinubu in his experiment. How do you transform individuals whose electoral worth were weak, or suspect, ab initio, into latter-day champions with the magic wand that they would wave and those who did not follow them much earlier will now obey them?
When the governors responded to Tinubu’s enchanting tune and abandoned their parties for his All-Progressives Congress (APC), they must have presented themselves as what they were not, although their respective capacities were obviously not an issue. It was more or less, come one, come all. All that Tinubu seemed to want was for all the governors to be on his side. Whatever he must have told them he wanted, each of the governors would have committed to.
Each of the governors would have promised to deliver his state to him during the 2027 election. Politics is always an art of the possible. Although Tinubu ought to know how each of the governors came to office, he would have got himself to believe that once on the gubernatorial seat, the governors would acquire that leverage that power confers. In other words, they would be relied upon to deliver their states.
Now, the moment of reckoning is approaching and panic has set in everywhere. As the 2027 elections draw nearer, the governors are coming to terms with the reality. They are neither popular nor capable of delivering what they must have promised Tinubu that they would do for him.
So, what do the governors do? Desperation leads to panic measures. That is what is afloat all over the country. Tinubu’s governors are resorting to authoritarian and panic measures to whip people into line, in ways that military dictators would recoil at. It is all in a bid to “deliver” electoral outcomes the governors know well is beyond their capacity to deliver.
From across the states, citizens are being subjected by their governors to shock treatments that stretch from the ridiculous to the abusive, in a desperate attempt to create optics of their being in charge. For the governors, it is no longer democracy, it is showing Tinubu that thy are indeed capable of driving the electorate to wherever the governor wants. In Anambra State, public servants received a circular threatening those who failed to show up for the governor’s launching of a pro-Tinubu campaign. “Attendance is mandatory”, according to the warning. The optics must be created that the state is for the president, willy nilly.
It is democracy by coercion. To fail to comply is to have the job of the poor civil servant on the line. In Enugu and Ebonyi States, commercial bus and tricycle drivers must paste Tinubu’s poster on their vehicles. Failure to do so attracts sanction.
Of course, in Benue, Edo, Enugu and Delta, it is a Scorched earth policy in politics all the way. The opposition should not even step into the states and meeting by any other political persuasion that is not endorsed by the governor, is anathema. The governor must be seen to be in charge and capable of closing down the political space. The APC state chairman in Edo promised that any effort to stop the vote promised Tinubu will be met with AK 47 effect.
Meanwhile, across the states the governors are busy reeling out the figures they have marked out to deliver to Tinubu. It hardly matters what the official voting population of the state is. Edo State started it off with the promise to deliver or donate 2.5 million votes to Tinubu. In Osun, Governor Ademola Adeleke who was re-elected as governor last August with a total of slightly more than 500,000 votes has set the votes he will donate to Tinubu at 1.5 million. Other gubernatorial vote donors are lining up and announcing their promissory notes. Tinubu must be impressed. This is all for him.
The truth however, which Tinubu ought to have known all along, and which the governors themselves also know, but will pretend not to know, is that 36 governors equals to 36 votes, unless the Independent National Electoral Commission alters the secrecy aspect of polling. The posturing is really repugnant.
